p. 21 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jun 10, 1915

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The largest class West Point has graduated in a century, will have its commencement in June. There are 164 graduates.

— A serious famine exists in the province of Szechuan, China, according to advices received by the State Department at Washington. The famine is due to a protracted drought.

— It appears that the liquor question has been settled, so far as Great Britain is concerned, by a compromise which eliminates all duties on beers, and places the restriction on the sale of spirits.

— July 6 will mark the five hundredth anniversary of the burning at the stake of John Huss, the great Bohemian forerunner of modern Protestantism. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America invites its various constituent organizations to observe the day appropriately.

— The great plant of Thomas A. Edison, destroyed by fire several months ago, has been rebuilt and is larger and better than before. Practically the entire force of 7,000 men are again at work, and many new ones have found places in the chemical plant recently built at Silver Lake to supply dyestuffs, and material for the diamond disk phonograph.

— In Santa Rosa, Cal., is a Baptist church building, the product of a single giant redwood tree which grew in the neighborhood of Guerneville, a few miles distant from where it now stands. Not only is the main structure built from the one tree, but the beams, pulpit, seatings, and all interior finishings — except the floor, which is of pine — are of the same wood, not a particle of plaster or other similar material being used in this remarkable building. The tree, when sawed, yielded 25,000 feet of lumber.

— There will be no war between Japan and China. An agreement has been reached, and the tension which has marked the last few weeks concerning affairs in the Far East has subsided. China gives her full assent to the transfer to the Japanese of all rights and privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Germans in Shan-tung. Japanese capital is to be used in the building of the Chifu railway, and China agrees to open numerous treaty ports in Shan-tung, after a consultation with Japan. Japan is also permitted to lease land in southern Manchuria for trading, industrial, and agricultural purposes, and her subjects are to be permitted to engage freely in industrial pursuits in that part of the country. While China agrees to give preference to the appointment of Japanese political, financial, and military overseers, Group V of the demands, which would give Japan a preponderance in the affairs of China, is withdrawn, being left for discussion at some future date. The official agreement is regarded generally as eliminating those features which officials of the United States government regarded as contravening treaty rights.

— Mrs. A. R. Canfield, seventy-four years old, has been elected mayor of Warren, Ill., defeating her opponent by four votes. Mrs. Canfield is the first woman in Illinois to have been made chief executive of a municipality. Warren’s population is about 1,500.

— Spain is preparing for possible war. A special commission of the Spanish government has opened headquarters in New York for the purpose of buying 250,000,000 cartridges, several thousand war automobiles, and a large flotilla of aeroplanes. The commission is also expected to order a number of submarines.

— The American Red Cross Society in its report of work done since the beginning of the war, August 2, states that during this period 292 surgeons, nurses, and members of the Sanitary Commission were sent to Europe to carry aid to the wounded and sick; that the sum of $1,243,189 was expended for these and other relief measures; and that thousands of pounds of food, clothing, medicines, and other necessities were purchased and distributed.

— President Benavides has issued, at Lima, Peru, a supreme decree accepting, with slight modifications, the contract proposed by Breitung & Co., Ltd., of New York, for the irrigation and colonization of Peruvian coast lands. The Peruvian government will issue $10,000,000 in bonds. The bond issue matures in thirty years; and when developed, the lands are to be sold on twenty-year payments. Approximately 100,000 acres will be added to the cultivated area of the country.

— The Panama Canal shows a net loss of about ten per cent in the comparison of tolls collected with the cost of operation and maintenance for the first eight months of its operation, according to an official statement to the War Department from Panama. Up to March 1, 1915, the cost of operation and maintenance from July 1, 1914, was $2,595,613.33. The total earnings of tolls in this period was $2,334,515.24. The March earnings cut the loss down to four per cent.